Tag Archives: Reflections

The Disappearing Art of Doing Nothing

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Doing nothing sounds simple until one actually tries to do it.

Sit still. Put the phone away. Do not read. Do not scroll. Do not make a list. Do not mentally draft an email, plan the week, remember the groceries, check the blood sugar reader, open a book, play a game, rearrange a thought, or wonder whether this stillness can be turned into something useful later.

Just sit.

For some people, this may sound peaceful. For me, it sounds luxurious, desirable, and almost impossible. I like the idea of doing nothing. In theory, it is sitting in a quiet room, perhaps lying down, staring into space, letting the mind settle like dust after a cupboard has been opened. But in reality, my brain does not settle. My mind behaves as if twenty browser tabs are open and one of them is playing music, usually at 2 am when I have woken up to use the toilet and should, by all logic, return to sleep.

Doing nothing is hard for me. Even when my body is still, my mind is moving. If I have a few minutes with no obvious task, my hand automatically reaches for my phone. I check social media, open a game, read Reddit, or go into my library app because if a story has hooked me, even a lift ride can become reading time. I fill small silences before they have a chance to become silence.

I do not particularly like this. But it is also part of modern life, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

We live in a world that has trained us to treat every gap as an opportunity. Waiting for the kettle? Check the phone. Waiting for the bus? Check the phone. Eating alone? Watch something. Sitting in bed? Scroll. Resting? Optimise the rest. Record the rest. Turn the rest into a morning routine, a Sunday reset, a wellness ritual, a slow-living aesthetic with soft lighting and a ceramic mug placed just so.

Even doing nothing, it seems, now has to work for its keep.

There is an irony in watching videos about slow living and self-care, knowing how much work must have gone into making them. The lighting, the camera angles, the editing, the captions, the music, the deliberate casualness of it all. Rest has become content. Stillness has become performance. The person filming their peaceful morning has probably spent more time arranging the shot than being peaceful.

I say this without judgment because I, too, enjoy watching such content. It is soothing in the way a clean kitchen in someone else’s house is soothing. But it also makes me laugh a little. We have become so uncomfortable with unproductive time that even leisure must be packaged, captioned, and posted.

This is perhaps why the art of doing nothing is disappearing. Not because we no longer desire it, but because we no longer know how to defend it.

As children, we had more empty time, whether we liked it or not. Growing up in Mumbai, I hated being bored. If I complained to my paternal grandmother that I was bored, she had a line in Tamil that sounded far better than any translation could manage. If I said, “Bore adikkaradu,” she would say, “Bore-a adi,” meaning “beat the boredom back”. In other words, boredom was not a crisis requiring adult intervention. It was something to be wrestled with, survived, and transformed.

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And we did transform it.

We read anything we could find. We invented games. We produced little plays. We pretended. We made things up. We stood on balconies and watched the world go by. I loved doing that, standing on the balcony and observing the street below. People walking, vehicles passing, neighbours talking, vendors calling out, the ordinary theatre of city life continuing whether or not one had anything to do.

There was a kind of richness in that unstructured look. No one called it mindfulness then. No one had to. It was simply what one did when there was nothing else to do.

I also daydreamed, especially at night when I could not sleep. I still do sometimes, though less often in the day now. Adult life has a way of shrinking the room available for aimless imagination. Daydreaming becomes something we squeeze between responsibilities or something that arrives only when sleep refuses to.

Children today have less of this empty time. BB and GG’s childhood still had some creativity in it. They played with dolls, board games, blocks, and toys. They were not exposed to social media very early. But once school, tuition, enrichment classes, and devices entered the picture, childhood became more scheduled. This is not unique to them. It is the rhythm of many children’s lives now: school, homework, tuition, activities, screens, repeat.

Some structure is good. Children need encouragement, discipline, and exposure. A little pressure can help them grow. But beyond a point, childhood becomes a calendar rather than a landscape. There is no time to wander. No time to invent a game out of nothing. No time to sit with boredom long enough for it to turn into imagination.

And boredom does have a purpose. It is not merely the absence of entertainment. It is where children meet themselves. It is where they learn to create, observe, wait, and think. If every moment is filled for them, they never discover what their own minds can do when left alone.

Of course, adults are not much better.

Singapore, where I live now, is a difficult place in which to do nothing. It is efficient, achievement-driven, scheduled, expensive, and always moving. There is always something to do, and often something that should have been done yesterday. Planning is rewarded. Productivity is admired. The calendar is a survival tool. Even leisure is often organised in advance.

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There are still places where I can zone out. At home, when the house is quiet. At the beach or in a park. In the library. On the upper deck of a bus, sitting by the window, watching the city move past. At the airport, oddly enough, especially when I am alone. Airports are perfect places for doing nothing because everyone is between places. No one fully belongs there for long. You can sit, watch people, imagine stories, and feel suspended from ordinary time. A long-haul flight offers something similar. Once the plane takes off, life below has to wait. No errands. No chores. No immediate demands. Just time, air, and a small screen one may or may not use.

India offers a different relationship with doing nothing. The India I grew up in was noisy, crowded, and full of constant cacophony, so doing nothing was never exactly quiet. But there were natural pauses, partly because life was less efficient. Waiting was built into the day. Waiting for buses, trains, relatives, phone calls, water, electricity, and information. Power cuts forced everyone to stop. Train journeys made one look out of the window. Neighbours dropped in. People sat around. Balconies, building compounds, and street corners became informal theatres of nothing in particular.

Now, when I go to Bangalore, I still find pockets of time to zone out. But India too has changed. Everyone has a smartphone. Everyone has internet. The pause has been colonised. Whether in India or Singapore, the hand goes to the phone. The old art of sitting and doing nothing has been replaced by the new habit of sitting and consuming something.

The phone may be the greatest enemy of nothingness. It is useful, addictive, entertaining, and always available. It rescues us from boredom so quickly that we no longer learn what boredom might have given us. It makes waiting painless but also makes thinking rarer. It connects us to everyone and disconnects us from the quiet inside ourselves.

This matters because doing nothing is not always nothing.

For a writer, especially, empty time is not wasted time. Ideas often arrive when I am not chasing them. During my morning walk with my meditation app. In the shower. While cooking. Before sleep. While drinking coffee. Sometimes in the most random places and moments. Writing needs empty space. It needs the mind to loosen its grip on usefulness. It needs time when nothing obvious is being produced, because below the surface, something is forming.

I do not usually mistake thinking time for laziness. I know that thought is part of writing. But knowing this does not always remove the guilt. When life has so many moving parts: job searching, writing, income streams, blog work, Echoes of Calm, family, health, Image Mission work, there is always something that could be done. One more application. One more article. One more Canva template. One more email. One more plan. One more post. One more idea to capture before it disappears.

In such a life, doing nothing can feel irresponsible.

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This is where productivity culture becomes dangerous. It teaches us that every moment must justify itself. Rest must improve performance. Hobbies must become income streams. Walking must count as fitness. Reading must contribute to growth. Writing must build a platform. Creativity must be monetised. Even a blog, which may begin as a personal space for reflection, memory, and expression, is quickly assessed through the lens of money.

For years after I started blogging, when I told people about it, I was often asked whether it made money. The question came so frequently that I eventually had to shut it down firmly. Not everything has to earn. Not every joy has to be converted into income. Not every act of expression must be weighed on the scale of productivity.

Yet I understand why people ask. We live in a world where time is money, and therefore time spent without earning, improving, networking, or producing appears suspect. Doing nothing becomes not merely a personal failure but an economic one. What did you get out of it? What did it lead to? How did it help?

Maybe it helped me remain human. That should be enough, though it often is not accepted as an answer.

Women, in particular, are rarely allowed to do nothing without judgment. A man resting is often simply resting. A woman resting is available. If she is sitting down, surely she can fold the laundry. If she has a free hour, surely she can cook something extra, organise a cupboard, call someone, supervise homework, plan a meal, reply to messages, soothe a feeling, remember an appointment, or be useful in some way.

Women are expected to fill empty space. Cooking, cleaning, organising, remembering, caring, planning, messaging, hosting, helping. Even rest can become a waiting room for the next task.

In some families, if a woman has free time, it must be explained. She cannot just sit. She must be tired, sick, upset, or lazy. Simple rest is not enough justification. This is one of the quiet injustices of domestic life. Women’s time is often treated as communal property. Everyone may draw from it. Everyone may assume it is available.

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Motherhood deepens this. When BB and GG were young, I barely had time to myself. Later, as they grew older, I reclaimed more of it, but until they finished school, there was always an undercurrent of alertness. Meals, schoolwork, activities, health, logistics, emotional needs, exam schedules, transport, forms, uniforms, tuition, everything. Even when I was not actively doing something, some part of me was on standby.

That standby mode does not switch off easily. Even now, doing nothing can feel slightly suspicious, as though someone somewhere must need something.

This is why chosen stillness feels so different from forced waiting. There is a kind of nothing that is peaceful: morning coffee in a silent house, a walk without hurry, sitting at a window, watching rain. But there is also a kind of nothing that is anxious and unpleasant: waiting when there is too much work, waiting for replies, waiting for results, waiting in uncertainty, waiting while the mind chews through every possible outcome.

Chosen stillness restores. Forced waiting drains.

This distinction matters because not everyone has the privilege to romanticise doing nothing. For someone juggling multiple jobs, caregiving, financial stress, illness, or survival, rest may not be easily available. Telling people to “slow down” can sound tone-deaf when their lives do not allow it. The issue is not simply individual choice. It is also social, economic, and cultural. Some people are not restless because they lack wisdom. They are restless because life demands it.

Still, within whatever space we have, however small, we need moments that are not claimed by productivity.

Health has taught me this in its own way. Managing diabetes means paying attention to the body, even when the mind wants to keep charging ahead. I use a CGM, and scanning it is itself a morning ritual. I know that being more rested helps me manage my blood sugar better. Stress, sleep, food, movement, and rest are all connected. The body keeps its own accounts, whether or not we acknowledge them.

Perhaps doing nothing is not nothing to the body. Perhaps it is repair.

The trouble is, I am not always listening closely enough to hear that. Like many people, I wait for the body to speak loudly before I pay attention. Fatigue must become exhaustion. Stress must become numbers on a screen. The mind must become too noisy to ignore. Only then do I pause, when pausing should have come much earlier.

Midlife adds another layer. As I grow older, I feel both more entitled to rest and more anxious about time. Doing nothing can feel like reclaiming time, but it can also feel like wasting it. The years no longer stretch endlessly ahead in the way they seemed to when I was young. There is a sharper awareness now that time is finite. This can make rest feel precious, but also make it feel dangerous. What am I doing with my life? What am I not doing? What should I have done by now?

Midlife asks uncomfortable questions. One of them is: what am I rushing toward, exactly?

We hurry through days as though there will be a final clearing where everything is done and rest becomes permissible. But that clearing never arrives. There is always another task, another worry, another plan. If rest has to be earned by finishing everything, we will never rest. The list is immortal. We are not.

Perhaps the art of doing nothing disappeared because the world prioritises busyness. Busy people look important. Busy lives look successful. Busy calendars suggest demand and relevance. To say “I am busy” is almost a badge of honour. To say “I did nothing” feels like a confession.

But what are we losing when we lose the ability to do nothing?

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We lose imagination. We lose patience. We lose the ability to observe without needing to capture. We lose the inner life that grows only in quiet. We lose boredom, and with it the strange creativity boredom can unlock. We lose the ability to be alone with ourselves. We lose reflection. We lose the habit of noticing beauty when it is not presented to us through a screen.

We also lose a certain tenderness towards time. Not all time has to be used. Some time can simply be lived.

I admire people who still seem able to do this. Older people sitting at void decks, shooting the breeze with no visible agenda. Temple-goers sitting quietly after darshan, not rushing out immediately after the ritual is done. Children staring into space. People sitting in parks. Someone with a cup of tea and nowhere urgent to be. These scenes stay with me because they feel increasingly rare. They are small acts of resistance against a world that asks, “What next?”

My ideal version of doing nothing is simple. Morning. I am the only one awake in the house. The room is quiet. I have a hot cup of coffee in my hand. My phone is nearby, not for scrolling, but to capture an idea if one arrives. I sit in silence. No one needs me yet. The day has not begun making its claims.

This is not dramatic. It will never trend. It cannot be turned into a productivity hack without ruining it. That is precisely why it matters.

Doing nothing does not mean abandoning responsibility. It does not mean laziness, though a part of me still carries that old conditioning. “Don’t waste time.” “Do something useful.” “Idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” “Why are you just sitting?” These phrases were common enough growing up, and I have used versions of them with BB and GG too. The inheritance continues even when we know better. We pass on not only values but anxieties.

Maybe the work now is to interrupt that inheritance.

To tell ourselves and our children that empty time is not wasted time. That rest need not be earned through exhaustion. That boredom will not destroy us. That creativity requires space. That the mind needs to wander. That the body needs to repair. That a woman sitting down is not automatically available. That a hobby does not have to become a side hustle. That not every moment must be captured, posted, measured, or improved.

The art of doing nothing is disappearing, but perhaps it is not gone. It waits in small places. In morning coffee. In a bus window. In the hush of a library. In a beach breeze. In the airport between flights. In a quiet walk. In the few minutes after lighting a lamp. In the pause after prayer. In the space before an idea becomes words.

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Maybe doing nothing is not the opposite of living fully. Maybe it is what allows us to live fully.

So tomorrow morning, if the house is still quiet and the day has not yet rushed in, I hope to sit with my coffee for a few minutes longer. I will probably still reach for my phone. I am not pretending to be a saint of stillness. But perhaps I can wait before touching it. Perhaps I can let the silence arrive first. Perhaps I can allow my mind to wander without immediately making it useful.

A few minutes of nothing. Which, I am beginning to realise, may be something after all.

Why Everyone Is Tired, Even When Life Is Easier

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There is a strange contradiction at the heart of modern life. In so many practical ways, life is easier than it has ever been. We have washing machines, food delivery, ride-hailing apps, digital banking, online shopping, Google Maps, YouTube tutorials, WhatsApp, household appliances, remote work, medical technology, easier travel, and more information than any generation before us could have imagined. And yet everyone is tired.

Not just physically tired, though there is plenty of that, too. This is a different kind of tiredness. Mental tiredness. Emotional tiredness. Social tiredness. Decision fatigue. Digital exhaustion. Financial stress. The kind of tiredness where nothing is exactly wrong, but everything feels like too much. The kind of tiredness that does not always go away after one night of sleep, because it does not come only from the body. It comes from the mind being permanently switched on.

We are tired even when life is easier because convenience has not given us rest. It has given us more things to manage. This is not to romanticise the past. I have no desire to return to a world without washing machines, online banking, reliable transport apps, or medical advances. Some things are genuinely easier now. Compared with my childhood, and certainly compared with my parents’ generation, everyday life has become convenient in countless ways. We can order groceries from our phones, transfer money in seconds, find directions anywhere, learn how to fix almost anything online, and speak to family across countries without waiting for expensive trunk calls or letters. These are not small things. They matter.

But ease is not the same as rest. Comfort is not the same as peace. Convenience is not the same as lightness. In fact, many conveniences have removed one kind of labour while adding another. Food delivery means we do not have to cook, but now we must scroll through two hundred options, compare prices, check delivery fees, wonder if it is too expensive, and feel mildly guilty for not making something at home. WhatsApp makes communication instant, but now everyone can reach us instantly. Online shopping saves time, but it also creates endless comparisons. Digital banking saves a trip to the bank but adds passwords, OTPs, app updates, portals, and the quiet fear of scams. Google Maps helps us navigate, but perhaps also makes us less patient when the journey is not optimised.

The work has changed shape. It has moved from our hands into our heads. Maybe this is why so many of us feel tired in a way that is hard to explain. We are not always doing more physically, but we are thinking more constantly. Remembering more, comparing more, deciding more, tracking more, responding more, planning more, and worrying more.

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I feel this myself. Some days I am more tired than others, but the tiredness is there. I am tired of trying to be a productive member of society. Tired from job searching, tired from managing health, tired from overthinking, tired from always being the planner, tired from long-distance caregiving, tired from ageing, and tired from holding too many tabs open in my head.

The sentence that describes it best is this: I am not tired because I do too much, but because I am always thinking about what still needs to be done. That is the modern condition, isn’t it? The unfinished list follows us everywhere. Even when we sit down, the list sits beside us. Even when we sleep, it waits. Even when we rest, part of us is scanning the horizon for what we have forgotten.

When I am tired, I become irritable and cranky. Sometimes I dissociate from things and simply want to be left alone. I lose interest even in things I love, including writing. I watch mindless content, not because it truly rests me, but because real rest feels too difficult. This too is a modern pattern. We choose fake rest because it asks less of us. Scrolling, watching videos, online browsing, half-reading, half-listening, half-existing. It distracts us, but it does not restore us. Real rest is harder. Real rest requires us to stop performing usefulness, even to ourselves.

Our parents’ generation was tired too, though perhaps in different ways. Their lives were physically harder. Fewer appliances, less convenience, more social obligations, fewer choices, and more rigid roles. Women, especially were expected to ignore tiredness. They carried on. They cooked, cleaned, cared, hosted, remembered, and swallowed exhaustion because saying “I am tired” was not always allowed. Tiredness could be dismissed as weakness. Weakness could be called laziness.

Children, too were not usually allowed to be tired. We were told to study, help, behave, and stop complaining. “Don’t waste time” was a common enough message. “Do something useful” was another. The idea that rest could be necessary rather than indulgent did not always exist in the language we grew up with.

But while the older generations had fewer conveniences, they may also have had less mental clutter in certain ways. There was no social media feed carrying the world into their minds every morning. No constant news alerts. No endless comparison with everyone’s holidays, homes, children, careers, bodies, meals, and achievements. No apps telling them to track every step, calorie, rupee, dollar, hour, and habit. Their lives were not easy. But perhaps their attention was less fragmented.

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Today, information overload is part of our tiredness. We know too much, all the time. News, wars, elections, scams, climate anxiety, health advice, job market changes, school admissions, university pathways, investment options, AI developments, parenting opinions, diet debates, productivity hacks, skincare routines, travel warnings, and the latest thing we are apparently supposed to worry about.

Knowing more can be empowering. It can help us make better decisions. But it can also be exhausting. I often feel that the human brain was not designed to carry the whole world before breakfast. And yet many of us begin the day by reaching for the phone and doing exactly that.

The phone is both a tool and a tormentor. It helps us communicate, read, plan, bank, order, check health data, navigate, work, and stay connected. I would not want to give it up. But it also makes us reachable, distracted, anxious, comparative, and unable to fully switch off. Most of us reach for it first thing in the morning and keep it near us until we sleep. It sits beside us like a demanding little rectangle of obligation and temptation.

Work has also changed. Modern work expects too much emotional and mental availability. Emails, WhatsApp messages, Teams chats, “quick calls,” urgent requests, meetings, follow-ups, performance reviews, networking, personal branding, upskilling, and the unspoken expectation that one should be responsive at all times. Work follows people home now. It travels in pockets and handbags. It lights up on screens at dinner. It enters weekends disguised as something that will “only take five minutes.”

For those of us managing multiple streams, this becomes even more tiring. Work, freelancing, job searching, writing, family, health, and organisational responsibilities do not sit neatly in separate boxes. They overlap. A job application is mentally different from paid work, but it is tiring in its own way. The tailoring of resumes, the cover letters, the online forms, the silence, the ghosting, and the sense of wondering whether there is any point in applying anymore. It is not only effort. It is emotional exposure repeated again and again.

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Then there is the achievement treadmill. Singapore makes this especially visible. It is efficient, safe, connected, and convenient, and I am grateful for many of those things. But it is also tiring. The cost of living, work expectations, school pressure, comparison, crowds, commuting, and the constant sense that everyone is progressing, upgrading, investing, studying, planning, and optimising can make life feel practically easier but mentally heavier. Everything works, but everyone is running.

India, in contrast, is tiring in different ways. The India I grew up in may have been physically harder but emotionally more spacious in some ways. But it was also noisy, bureaucratic, socially demanding, and full of gendered expectations and family interference. When I visit India now, I initially feel rested, perhaps because of memory and familiarity. But then the noise, pollution, chaos, and sheer effort of moving through daily life begin to exhaust me. Bangalore, especially, can be an exercise in patience. Travelling across the city is not a commute so much as a character-building programme nobody signed up for. So no, the answer is not that one place is restful and another is not. Modern tiredness has many geographies.

A large part of this tiredness is emotional labour, and here gender cannot be ignored. Women are often more tired than they admit because they are not only doing tasks but also managing emotional labour. They are remembering, anticipating, planning, noticing, soothing, managing moods, maintaining relationships, and keeping family life moving. Appliances may have made housework easier, but they did not remove the responsibility of noticing what has to be done.

Someone still has to know that the groceries are running low, the appointment needs booking, the child needs a form signed, the parent needs checking on, the helper needs instructions, the birthday needs remembering, the meal needs planning, the message needs replying to, the festival needs preparing for, and the family rhythm needs holding together. In many families, that person is still a woman.

I know this in my own life. I am the planner in the family and perhaps also the natural doer, so many things fall to me. Some of this is personality. Some of it is habit. Some of it is patriarchy, wearing comfortable home clothes and pretending it’s common sense.

Parenting adds another layer. Parenting today is mentally tiring in ways previous generations may or may not have experienced to the same degree. There is more information now, and with information comes anxiety. School choices, tuition, enrichment, screen time, food, safety, identity, mental health, university admissions, careers, social media, friendships, independence. Every decision feels loaded.

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Parenting BB and GG was more mentally tiring than I expected, especially because they are twins. When children are young, tiredness is physical: feeding, bathing, school runs, homework, logistics. When they grow older, the tiredness changes. It becomes emotional. You worry about choices, studies, jobs, relationships, independence, and the future. You are less physically needed but not necessarily less mentally involved. The work moves inward.

Ageing changes tiredness too. Things I could do even five years ago feel harder now. Energy is no longer something I can assume will appear on command. I try to rest more willingly, but I also push myself at times. Midlife brings its own strange combination of urgency and fatigue. There is still so much one wants to do, but the body is no longer willing to be treated like an unpaid intern.

Health adds another background hum. Managing diabetes, using a CGM, thinking about food, readings, walking, sleep, stress, medical appointments, and how the body is responding. None of these may seem dramatic on their own, but together they create a constant layer of awareness. It is another form of invisible daily management. The body becomes one more thing to monitor, interpret, and negotiate with.

And then, as if all this were not enough, we live in an age of relentless self-improvement. We are told to eat better, sleep better, move more, earn more, invest smarter, build a brand, write more, declutter, meditate, journal, network, learn AI, regulate our emotions, have a side hustle, age well, dress well, parent well, rest well, and become the best version of ourselves. It is exhausting just listing it. The pressure to improve turns life into a permanent project. We are never simply people living our lives. We are always under renovation.

Even rest becomes something to do correctly. This is where comparison enters. I try not to compare myself with others, but sometimes it creeps in. Someone else seems to have the career sorted, the children sorted, the house sorted, the health sorted, the holidays sorted, the face glowing, the meals plated, and the life beautifully arranged. Of course, we know social media is curated. We know this intellectually. But emotionally, the comparison still slips through. We look at our ordinary, unfinished, slightly messy lives and wonder why everyone else seems to be managing better.

Perhaps they are not. Perhaps they are tired too. Maybe everyone is tired because nothing ever feels finished anymore. In the past, many tasks had clearer endings. Wash the clothes, cook the meal, clean the house, and finish the errand. Today, so much of life is endless. Email never ends, messages never end, news never ends, content never ends, job applications never end, self-improvement never ends, health tracking never ends, financial planning never ends, and social obligations never end. There is always more. The endlessness is tiring.

What people need less of, I think, is pressure, comparison, pretending, and the expectation of constant availability. Less noise. Less optimisation. Less of the idea that every moment must be useful and every person must be improving. What people need more of is sleep. Real sleep, not revenge bedtime scrolling until the brain gives up. More meaningful work, because meaningless work exhausts the spirit in a way even physical labour does not. More kindness, because a tired world becomes harsher when kindness disappears. And perhaps more boredom, too. Boredom gives the mind room to wander. It creates space where not everything is input, output, or performance.

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For me, the rest that actually helps is simple. Sleep first, then reading and writing. Being alone in silence, meditating, praying, and talking to the divine. These things restore rather than merely distract. They return me to myself. The problem is that we often treat tiredness as a personal failure. If we are tired, we assume we are not organised enough, disciplined enough, resilient enough, grateful enough, or productive enough. But perhaps tiredness is also information. It tells us that the load is too heavy, even if parts of the load are invisible. It tells us that convenience has not solved the deeper problem. It tells us that human beings were not meant to be reachable, measurable, comparable, and improvable every waking minute.

Life is easier now, but it is also harder because everyone is stressed, worried, and overall tired. The tools have improved. The pressure has multiplied. The physical load may have reduced, but the mental load has expanded to fill the space convenience created.

So what do we do? I do not think the answer is to reject modern life. I like my washing machine; I like online banking, being able to order groceries, messaging my family, checking a map, reading on my phone, and monitoring my health. The answer is not to pretend the past was better. It was not, at least not for everyone.

But perhaps we need to stop confusing efficiency with ease. We need to stop assuming that because something is convenient, it is restful. We need boundaries around phones, work, comparison, and self-improvement. We need to see women’s invisible labour before we can share it. We need workplaces that do not treat constant availability as commitment. We need families where planning is not silently assigned to one person. We need to stop treating tiredness as weakness.

Most of all, we need permission to be ordinary human beings. Not always optimised. Not always productive. Not always reachable. Not always improving. Not always strong. Not always cheerful. Not always holding everything together. Maybe what we need is not another app, hack, system, or productivity method. Maybe what we need is the courage to admit that being human was never meant to be this constantly managed.

So perhaps the next time tiredness arrives, instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?”, we can ask a better question. What am I carrying? And perhaps, even more importantly, what can I finally put down?

Are We Becoming Too Busy to Be Kind?

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Some questions sound simple until we sit with them. Are we becoming too busy to be kind? At first glance, the answer seems obvious. Yes, of course we are. Look around. Everyone is rushing. Everyone is tired. Everyone has deadlines, bills, errands, worries, children, ageing parents, work messages, health issues, school matters, and a phone that never really lets them rest.

But the question is not only whether we are busy. Most of us are. The real question is what that busyness is doing to us.

Is it making us less patient? Less thoughtful? Less willing to pause? Less likely to notice someone else’s discomfort? Less able to help unless it is convenient, scheduled, and does not interfere with our own carefully planned lives?

There was a time when, if something happened in public, the instinct might have been to run towards the person who needed help. Today, too often, the instinct seems to be to take out a phone. A fall, an argument, an accident, an uncomfortable scene, all of it becomes content before it becomes concern. There is something deeply unsettling about that. The urge to record has begun to compete with the urge to assist. In some cases, it has replaced it.

Of course, not everyone behaves this way. People still help. Strangers still step forward. Quiet goodness still exists all around us. But there is also a growing hesitation. Why get involved? What if I get blamed? What if this becomes complicated? What if someone records me? What if it is not my problem?

And so we look away.

Perhaps people have not become less kind. Perhaps they have become more tired, more afraid, and more overwhelmed. Kindness may still exist, but it is buried under stress, deadlines, financial worries, caregiving responsibilities, commuting fatigue, and the mental load of modern life. The heart may still be soft, but the day is hard. And when the day is hard for too long, softness begins to feel like a luxury.

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To me, kindness is not about grand gestures. It is not about public charity, dramatic declarations, or social media posts about how compassionate one is. Kindness is far simpler and far more difficult. It is being a decent human being. It is helping when one can. It is being thoughtful. It is treating everyone around us with the same basic dignity, regardless of their social or financial status.

That last part matters.

Because very often, the measure of our kindness is not how we treat those above us, or those we want to impress. It is how we treat those who have no power over us. Service staff. Cleaners. Domestic helpers. Delivery riders. Security guards. Receptionists. Cashiers. The person clearing our tray. The person answering our call. The person who cannot talk back because their job depends on remaining polite.

It is easy to be charming to someone important. It takes character to be respectful to someone who is tired, underpaid, and invisible to most people.

And yet, this is where unkindness often shows itself. A sharp tone. A dismissive gesture. No eye contact. No thank you. An assumption that because someone is serving us, they are somehow beneath us. It is as if social or economic hierarchy gives people permission to forget basic decency.

It does not. Kindness is not kindness if it is selective. If we reserve courtesy only for those we consider our equals, then what we are practising is not kindness. It is social calculation.

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I first moved to Singapore many years ago, and some of my earliest memories of public life here are complicated ones. I remember older Chinese passengers not sitting next to me on the bus or train, even when there was space. I remember people tapping the seat after I vacated it, as though removing my traces. These were small moments. Nobody shouted. Nobody said anything directly. But small unkindnesses can stay with us precisely because they are small. They make us question whether we imagined them. They leave a faint bruise.

At work too, unkindness often arrives in quiet forms. A message ignored, a reply delayed without explanation, someone pretending not to see your contribution, or a person in authority using silence as a weapon. No single incident may seem large enough to complain about, but together they create an atmosphere. Busy workplaces can become unkind workplaces, not always because people are cruel, but because pressure makes everyone transactional.

Kindness at work is not about being sweet all the time. It is about clear communication. It is about not dumping urgent work unnecessarily. It is about giving credit. Respecting people’s time. Saying thank you. Not weaponising hierarchy. Assuming good intent until proven otherwise. These are not soft things. They are the foundation of a healthy workplace.

But we do not always value them. Today’s culture praises productivity, ambition, speed, confidence, hustle, excellence, leadership, success, and resilience. These are not bad qualities. But where does kindness sit among them? Is it praised? Rewarded? Promoted? Or is it seen as soft, weak, inefficient, naive, not strategic enough?

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Too often, kind people are taken advantage of. They are expected to absorb more, forgive more, stretch more, and understand more. Their kindness becomes part of the system’s convenience. This is why kindness also needs boundaries. Being kind does not mean becoming a doormat. It does not mean tolerating disrespect. It does not mean saying yes when every part of you is exhausted. True kindness includes honesty. It includes respect for oneself too.

That may be the hardest form of kindness for many of us.

We speak often about being kind to others, but what about being kind to ourselves? Many of us are far harsher inwardly than we would ever be to another person. I know I am guilty of this. When things do not go my way, I can very quickly slip into self-blame. I think of all the things I did wrong, all the ways I could have done better, all the moments where I was not perfect enough. It is exhausting, this private courtroom we carry within us.

And perhaps that is part of the problem. People who are constantly unkind to themselves may have very little softness left for others. If our inner voice is always impatient, critical, and unforgiving, it becomes harder to speak gently outwardly. The tone leaks. The pressure spills.

Still, this cannot become an excuse. “I am stressed” may explain unkindness, but it does not erase its effect.

We all know this because we have all done it. I try to be conscious about how I treat people, but I am sure there have been times when I have been inadvertently unkind. And if I am honest, I am probably most unkind to those closest to me: S, then my children, then my helper. I have also been unkind to my parents and my sister. I apologise when I realise it, and I try to walk back. But the truth remains. We are often least guarded with the people who love us most.

Perhaps because we know they will forgive us. Perhaps because we assume they will understand. Perhaps because home is where the mask comes off, and unfortunately, sometimes the manners come off with it.

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This is a painful thing to admit, but an important one. Any essay on kindness that only points outward becomes too easy. The rude stranger, the impatient commuter, the harsh boss, the ungrateful customer, they are all convenient examples. But the real test of kindness is not only how I behave when I am rested, admired, and in public. It is how I behave when I am tired, disappointed, anxious, and at home.

Motherhood has taught me this in unexpected ways. I became more patient as a mother, so much so that my father once noticed it with surprise. I suppose having twins does that to you. When there are two babies, two sets of needs, two cries, two schedules, two small humans depending on you at once, something in you either hardens or expands. For me, it expanded my patience.

I have often been more patient with BB and GG than with many others in my life. And now that my parents are older, I find myself more patient with them too. Age reverses many roles quietly. The people who once waited for us now need us to wait for them.

Kindness is harder when one is tired. There is no point pretending otherwise. But I also believe that if someone is intrinsically kind, that quality remains, even under pressure. It may wobble. It may fray at the edges. But it does not disappear. Real kindness is not a mood. It is a muscle. It is also, perhaps, like a bank account. The more we deposit into it, the more it grows. A small act here, a patient response there, a thoughtful pause, a decision not to snap, a decision to help, all of it adds up.

What would happen if everyone around us became just ten percent kinder? Not saintly. Not self-sacrificing. Just ten percent more patient. Ten percent more thoughtful. Ten percent less likely to assume the worst. Ten percent more willing to say, “Take your time.” Would we not live in a better society?

Singapore is an interesting place to think about this question because it is such an efficient society. Things work, trains arrive, queues move and systems are clear. Time is respected. There is much to admire in this. But efficiency can sometimes look like coldness, even when it is not intended that way. When everyone is moving fast, softness can seem like delay. Pausing can feel like obstruction. The person who needs extra time becomes an inconvenience.

Singaporeans are often kind in practical ways. There are people who give up seats on buses and trains, neighbours who help without fuss, colleagues who cover for one another quietly, strangers who step in when needed. But perhaps, as a society, there can be impatience in emotional spaces. A discomfort with messiness. A preference for order over tenderness. A tendency to move quickly past anything that slows the system down.

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India, at least the India I grew up in, offered a different model. Not necessarily better in every way, but different. Growing up, it was common to go into a neighbour’s house to drink water or wait if one’s parents were not home. My parents could travel and leave my sister and me alone, secure in the knowledge that neighbours would help, feed us, and be there in an emergency. I remember a neighbour picking me up from the station when my parents could not.

That kind of neighbourliness was ordinary then. Not heroic. Not worthy of an announcement. Just what people did.

I do not know if that India exists in the same way today. Cities have changed. Lives have changed. Trust has changed. People are busier, more guarded, more private, perhaps with reason. The old neighbourhood could be kind, but it could also be intrusive. Warmth came with unsolicited advice. Help came with commentary. Everyone knew your business, sometimes before you did. Still, there was a human net. Imperfect, nosy, sometimes annoying, but real.

Today, in many cities across the world, that net has thinned. We may live closer together physically, but further apart emotionally. We know the delivery rider’s location on an app, but not our neighbour’s name. We can track parcels, flights, investments, and calories, but still fail to notice when someone near us is struggling.

Online life has complicated this further. Social media has made people more visible, but not necessarily more compassionate. It has made it easier to perform concern and harder to practise it quietly. Outrage is instant. Judgment is instant. Cancelling is instant. Mockery is instant. People assume the worst with remarkable speed. Anonymity gives courage to cruelty. And the desire to go viral can turn someone else’s pain into opportunity.

Perhaps social media has not made people unkind. Perhaps it has simply made visible what people always thought privately. But visibility changes behaviour. When every act can become content, kindness itself can become performative. The public declaration begins to matter more than the private action.

This is why I respect small private kindness most. The kindness no one sees. The colleague who covers for someone without announcing it. The neighbour who helps without keeping score. The stranger who gives up a seat. The person who replies gently when they could have been sharp. The one who treats the cleaner and the CEO with the same courtesy. The friend who remembers a detail. The family member who notices tiredness before it becomes collapse.

Everyday decency matters more to me than grand gestures. Consistency matters more than spectacle. Action matters more than words, though words too can heal when they are sincere.

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Who taught me kindness? Many people. My family. My neighbours. Books. The world I grew up in, where values like Athithi Devo Bhava, the guest is God, were part of the cultural fabric. At its best, this idea is rooted in generosity and hospitality. It teaches us to make space for another person. To feed, welcome, and care. Of course, like all traditions, it can also become performative or burdensome, especially for the women expected to do all the feeding and welcoming. But at its heart lies something beautiful: the idea that another person’s comfort matters.

Maybe that is what kindness really is. The belief that another person’s experience matters.

It does not always require a lot of time. Sometimes kindness happens in a second. Holding the lift. Letting someone go ahead. Saying thank you. Not honking. Smiling at someone who looks nervous. Replying to a message with care. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt.

But deeper kindness does require attention. And attention is what busyness steals first.

When we are too busy, we stop noticing. We stop noticing the helper who looks tired. The parent who is repeating a story because they want connection, not because they have forgotten they told us before. The child who is quieter than usual. The spouse who has done ten invisible things before breakfast. The colleague who is overwhelmed. The cashier who has dealt with rude customers all day. The cleaner whose work makes our comfort possible.

The opposite of kindness is not always cruelty. Sometimes it is simply not noticing.

And this is where busyness becomes dangerous. Not because having a full life is wrong. Most of us cannot opt out of responsibility. We have to work, care, plan, earn, cook, commute, manage, and keep going. But if we are so busy that we no longer have time to be decent, then something has gone wrong. If our schedules leave no room for patience, our ambition no room for gentleness, our efficiency no room for humanity, then we have built lives that may function well but feel emotionally poor.

The world does not need more performative kindness. It needs more ordinary kindness. The unglamorous kind. The kind that does not photograph well. The kind that does not need applause. The kind that shows up in tone, timing, patience, respect, and restraint.

It means helping when we can. Not recording when someone needs assistance. Not turning away simply because “it is not our problem.” Not using “I’m busy” as a blanket excuse to avoid care, courtesy, or responsibility. Yes, genuine overwhelm is real. There are seasons when people are stretched beyond capacity. But the line between genuine overwhelm and careless self-importance is thin, and we cross it more easily than we admit.

Maybe the question is not only whether we are too busy to be kind.

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Maybe the question is whether we are willing to become less busy in the ways that matter. Less busy judging. Less busy proving ourselves. Less busy performing goodness. Less busy chasing productivity at the cost of tenderness. Less busy assuming that our urgency is more important than someone else’s dignity.

A kinder life does not require grand transformation. It may begin with a pause. A breath before replying. A thank you. An apology. A decision to help. A decision not to humiliate. A decision to treat the person serving us as a person, not a function. A decision to be gentler with those at home, because love should not have to survive our worst tone simply because it can.

Kindness matters because it makes the world a better place. That sounds almost too simple, but simple truths often are. A kinder world is not built only by policies, institutions, or public campaigns, though those matter too. It is built in kitchens, trains, offices, hospital corridors, school gates, WhatsApp messages, hawker centres, lifts, and living rooms.

It is built when we notice.

Perhaps we are not becoming too busy to be kind. Not yet. But we are busy enough that kindness now requires more intention than before. It has to be chosen. Practised. Protected. Passed on.

And maybe that is where we begin. Not by trying to become saints. That would be unbearable for everyone involved. But by becoming ten percent kinder. Ten percent slower to judge. Ten percent quicker to help. Ten percent more aware of the people around us.

It may not change the whole world at once.

But it will change the world immediately around us. And that is not a small thing.

Goodbye 2025: A Year That Didn’t Ask for Permission

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I thought this year would end neatly. With a sentence that closed the loop. A role that made sense of the effort. A clear signal that said, “This is where it was all leading.” That didn’t happen. And once the initial disappointment had settled, I realised something uncomfortable but useful. I had been holding the year hostage to one outcome. As if everything else only counted if that final note landed right. It didn’t. So here’s the honest version instead.

This was a year of motion, not resolution. Of showing up without guarantees. Of living fully while waiting and slowly learning that waiting can quietly take over your life if you let it. Much of this year sat in a strange in-between space. Not stuck, but not quite moving in the way I wanted. There were applications, interviews, and preparation that went deeper than usual. Hope that felt earned. And long stretches of silence. Waiting is deceptively draining. It looks passive, but it demands constant emotional regulation. You rehearse futures that may never arrive. You keep parts of yourself on pause. You tell yourself not to plan too far ahead, just in case. At some point, I noticed how much energy I was handing over to rooms I wasn’t in. Committees. Panels. Conversations about my future are happening without me. That realisation didn’t make the outcome easier. But it shifted something. It made me more protective of my present.

Europe was the high point of the year, without question. Not because it was perfect. But because it gave me distance from my own noise. This trip, with five of my sisters, people who have known me for decades, was the trip I didn’t know I needed. Something is clarifying about being away from the context that constantly defines you. No one knows your backstory. No one asks what you do in the shorthand ways that invite comparison. You are free to just exist. I walked a lot. Without tracking steps. Without destinations. I noticed how my mind slowed down when it wasn’t trying to optimise the day. Meals took longer. Thoughts had room to finish themselves. Travel, when it works, doesn’t distract you from real life. It reminds you of who you are when you’re not performing competence or ambition. Europe reminded me that I like slowness. That I pay attention. That I feel most myself when days are shaped by curiosity rather than urgency. That version of me isn’t exclusive to travel. She just gets crowded out at home.

Later in the year, I made a small trip to Bangalore to meet my parents. I spent the ten days chilling at home, being with them, taking them to doctor appointments, meeting family, and just spending more time with myself. While there, we found that my mum has cataracts in both eyes, one eye more severe than the other. So I will be taking a trip again in the new year to be a caregiver, along with my sister, and get both eyes operated on.

We ended the year with a family trip to the beautiful Cameron Highlands. This trip was also because S and I were celebrating a milestone anniversary. It was there that I went through both highs and lows. The trip was very relaxing, but on the day of our anniversary, I got the news that a position I was sure was my dream position in my dream organisation was not mine. It took me a couple of days to recover, but the mountains helped me realise that maybe this was not the dream I needed; it may have been the dream I wanted.

The Cameron Highlands had a gentleness, with mornings without rush and evenings without hurry. The kind of rest that doesn’t announce itself as recovery but leaves you steadier. It was also a reminder that life doesn’t pause for professional disappointment. Love continues. Family continues. Shared meals and ordinary conversations continue. That matters more than we admit when we’re busy chasing outcomes.

Professionally, this year forced a reckoning. I’ve always believed that the right role would bring a sense of arrival. That would quiet the internal questioning. That would validate the long, nonlinear path. This year challenged that belief. The disappointment wasn’t just about a no. It was about letting go of a future I had already lived in my head. And that takes time. I’ve had to sit with harder questions instead. What kind of work actually sustains me? How much flexibility am I willing to claim rather than apologise for? What does success look like when it isn’t tied to institutional approval? I don’t have tidy answers. But I’m no longer willing to trade alignment for legitimacy.

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One thing I’m quietly proud of is that I kept writing. Not consistently. Not always confidently. But honestly. This year, writing became less about output and more about staying in conversation with myself. A way to think clearly when everything else felt provisional. I’m less interested now in metrics that don’t nourish me. Less tempted by external validation that fades quickly. More committed to depth, even when it’s slower. Words remain the place I return to when I need to make sense of things.

This year took certainty. It took a few carefully constructed narratives about timing and fairness. But it gave perspective. Distance from urgency. Proof that I can carry disappointment without letting it hollow me out. It gave me joy that had nothing to do with achievement. Long walks. Shared silence. Familiar places seen with new eyes. It reminded me that my life is larger than any single role.

I’m ending the year without the professional punctuation mark I wanted. But I’m ending it grounded. Still curious. Still willing to hope, just more carefully. This isn’t a victory lap. It’s a checkpoint. A pause to acknowledge the ground I’ve covered. And then, quietly, to keep going.

Looking Back at 2024

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Today is the penultimate day of the year, and as always, here’s my wrap-up of the year.

2024 started on a very positive note for me. I was gainfully employed, enjoying what I was doing and looking forward to the year. I also made a trip to India to celebrate my father’s 80th birthday and met my sister after almost eight years. The week we spent in Bangalore was probably the highlight of the year for me. 

Then, by the end of the first quarter, I was let go from my job citing structural changes to the organisation. This hit me hard, I was finally starting to feel productive, but letting go made me go into a mild depression. I felt useless, but then after a period of not feeling like a productive member of society, I decided to start looking for something. I also found a career coach who is working with me to finetune my resume and working with me on interview techniques, so a huge thanks to her. 

Then, about mid-year, a friend, who was an ex-colleague reached out to ask if I was interested in writing commissioned pieces. This friend shared my interest in writing and we bonded on our shared love for books and writing. I tried a couple of articles and was hooked on it. I loved that I could earn money from doing something that I loved. This was my Ikigai moment and in 2025, I will explore this further. Maybe I can make a living from writing?

I have been meditating consistently for a few years now and my mental health has been the best it has in a long time. Even when I was laid off, it didn’t take long for me to bounce back, full credit goes to my meditation. I also evolved spiritually this year, learning more about Hinduism and going deep into myself to commune with my Ishtadev. 

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My health and fitness levels are the same as last year, though I’ve had a couple of health scares this year. I am getting old and my body is more than eager to let me know this. Other than my diabetes which is somewhat in check, other parts of my body decided to remind me of my age including my neck and shoulders and my leg. But like everything else, that also passed. My goal for 2025 is to be a healthier version of myself and the first step will be to give up on fried snacks and street food. That’s going to be a hard one, but I am going to try this for myself.

GG has been in school this year and is thriving, for which I am very happy since she is doing something she enjoys studying about. She is very ambitious and wants to do more in her life and has a five, ten and even a twenty-year plan for herself. BB, on the other hand, is still trying to find himself. He started 2024 by completing his Basic Military Training and then was posted to his unit where he is doing something he enjoys – working in the engineering field. This year, he was also sent for a driving course where he learnt to drive cars and heavy vehicles. This is a Singapore Armed Forces license, but hopefully, he can easily convert it to a civilian license. My hope for him is that in 2025, he will figure out what he wants in life and start planning to reach there once he ends his national service around the last quarter of 2025.

I am happy with the way this blog is taking shape. I started writing more than a decade back and after a few years of not writing regularly, for the past eight or nine years, I have been very consistent. And this year I breached the 4 figure mark and am happy that more people are liking and reacting to my posts. So a huge thank you to all of you for reading what I write. I have plans for 2025 which I will share in the next post.

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I want to show my gratitude to all those who came into my life this year and enriched it. Even if they did not do me good, the lessons I learned in those interactions will stand me in good stead. And to those who came into my life with positivity, I have immense respect for them and their teachings.

So happy New Year, and may 2025 be a better year than 2024!